Friday, September 21, 2012

WH40K Campaign: Mapping B.R.7 Part 3

As I have admitted before, one of my least favorite parts of this hobby is actually keying a dungeon or adventure. When it comes to actually being at the table, I much prefer working off of simple notes and a bunch of random tables. It helps me be creative and it makes my time at the table far more enjoyable — I get to be surprised by my own creation.

As such, the most challenging aspect of mapping B.R.7 is going to be keying this potentially massive megadungeon. One of the ways that I improvise at the table is coming up with themes for various sections of a dungeon — based upon either the architecture, inhabitants or both. In thinking in terms of a hive city, one basic theme will be city zoning.

I took a brief look at the zoning laws of New York City this week and determined that they have three basic zones: Residential, Commercial and Industrial. Each of these has three subcategories based on population. This can be extrapolated into nine zones:

Poor Residential (high population)

Middle-Class Residential (medium population)

Upper-Class Residential (low population)

Warehouse/Storage-Commercial (low population)

Office Space Commercial (medium population)

Retail Commercial (high population)

Heavy Industry (low population)

Medium Industry (medium Population)

Light Industry (high population)

To this list I would also include Military (since there is such a huge emphasis on war in the WH40K universe). Thus, for every section of map I make, I can roll on a table to determine the basic zoning (and thus the theme) of the area:

1 comment:

One of the things I've noticed about Hive cities in the 40K universe is how similar they are to the Mega cities of Judge Dread - though in on a smaller scale. As Mega City basically covers the eastern seaboard. Besides the huge cities, the Arbites which is the planetary/local police force have similar characteristics as the Judges in Dread's world.

I bring this up simply as another resource for you to consider looking at. There may be some tables in Mogoose's Judge Dread RPG describing the Mega City, but don't have access to my game books at the moment. At the very least, it does give some additional flavor and fluff that you might want to add into the Hive City make-up.